Disclaimer

Nothing expressed here reflects the opinions of the Peace Corps or the U.S. government. I say this in part to protect them from getting blamed for anything I might say, but also to keep them from stealing my jokes.

Saturday, January 5, 2013

r-e-s-p-e-c-t

A conversation I had this
morning with my neighbor Luca:

Luca: Madam,
your chicken, she has been captured by a predator. A very big cat.

Me: Oh.
[surprised]

Oh.
[a little sad]

Oh.
[a little relieved because I see sweet, placid, quiet Diana Ross in the
distance, which means Aretha Franklin was the victim. Aretha was…difficult.]

Oh,
that is sad. So now Diana is alone.

Luca: Yes,
you must eat her.

I’m not going to eat Diana
Ross. But I am going to tell a story
about Aretha Franklin, the big, brassy-voiced hen who (visually, at least) was
everything I hoped my first chicken would be: quaintly scalloped feathers and sturdy,
faintly prehistoric self-carriage, like a Saurischian-inspired teapot. Chickens
can be beautiful. Chickens can be dangerous. Aretha was both.

I found her roosting on my roof
once. I found her sleeping on my bed twice. I found her on my kitchen table too
many times to count. I lost thousands of kwacha in precious food because of
her. (Literally fives of dollars.) I was jolted from deep slumber at least a
few times each week because I was certain I heard the telltale flap-and-squawk
of a chicken leaping someplace she isn’t supposed to be. (She was actually
innocent in this case because auditory hallucinations are a side effect of the
anti-malarial medication I’m on – but it does
paint a picture of the mental hold she had on me.)

Her magnum opus was
fittingly presented to me in the most devastating way possible.

I came home one day in
November to find my kitchen torn apart:
bags of flour ripped open and flung across the cement; just-bought tomatoes partially
eaten and thrown on the ground; a loaf of bread pecked apart lengthwise, so
that half of it was gone but all of it was inedible; Aretha dozing on my hot
plate amid a Jackson Pollock painting of her own feces. But then, lo! There on
the floured floor, to complete the hellish scene: a single egg lain in the
middle of it, like an offering.

She contributed absolutely
nothing of any value after that.

R.I.P. Aretha Franklin
(2012-2013)

We barely knew ye…and yet,
we also kind of felt like we knew ye enough